Sir Christopher Chope
MP for Christchurch · Conservative · United Kingdom
“When was the last time that an allotted Opposition day was withdrawn in the way that the Leader of the House is withdrawing this one? I was looking at my calendar of business, otherwise known as the Order Paper, and it says that “The selection of the matters to be debated will be made by the Leader of the Opposition (Standing Order No.”
“The Climate Change Committee has condemned the Government for failing and falling short of adapting to climate change and accepting the reality as it is, which is that by the end of this century, global temperatures will have increased to between 3.5° and 4.5° above pre-industrial levels.”
“The Minister has referred to the grooming gangs inquiry carried out by our friend, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), and early-day motion 380 makes a number of recommendations. Will the Minister engage with the hon.”
“The landmark 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence by the United States takes place in the week commencing 29 June. I have applied for an Adjournment debate, but will the Leader of the House enable more Members to be able to participate in marking that historic event?”
“That is exactly what I did on behalf of my constituent Paul Kenchington: I wrote to the Secretary of State about the specialist steel that he uses, and I have not had a reply.”
“Next week, can the Leader of the House produce a Government statement in response to the Hallett review on covid-19 vaccines? Lady Hallett recommended major reform of the vaccine damage payment scheme.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,444 lines we hold for Sir Christopher Chope, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 35 of 109.
“I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. The Bill is simple: it imposes upon the Treasury a duty to make regulations under section 153A of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015. You might think it extraordinary, Madam Deputy Speaker, that we have to legislate to require the Treasury to implement legislation that we in the House approved in 2015 and that I have been promised by numerous Ministers since is on the cusp of being brought into law. It has not yet been brought into law, and the consequence is that the taxpayer is probably about £1 billion worse off—the benefit to the Exchequer of the provisions in the Act was about £200 million each year. It is against that background that I was very pleased to have a meeting with the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury.”
“How is it, all this time later, that we do not even have the regulations? We have not even had a response to the latest consultation, which was originally promised to be delivered in 2018. I went to see the then Chief Secretary back in 2017 and said to her, “Has it occurred to you that this measure is supported by almost everybody in politics and in public life? Has it occurred to you that the resistance to it is coming from the civil service, because they are going to be losing out as a result of the implementation of the Bill?””
“One reason why I got interested in this subject was that I was concerned that proposed local government reorganisation in Dorset would be an excuse for a whole lot of public officials employed by local councils to look after each other’s interests at the expense of the local taxpayer and give themselves big handouts. I am afraid that my worst fears proved to be well founded, and some unconscionably high payments were made as a result. I take the view, unlike my hon. Friend, that this issue is urgent and overdue for action. Indeed, I think an alternative title to my Bill might be the Overcoming Sir Humphrey’s Resistance Bill, because the resistance of the civil service to what is proposed in this Bill is a textbook example of how the civil service can conspire to frustrate the will of Parliament and, indeed, of the elected Government.”
“That was a very long intervention, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I am afraid that I do not really agree with the tenor of it, which excuses some of the appalling behaviour that is taking place in local government. A recent article in The Times revealed that Steven Mason, a former Northumberland County Council chief executive, was given a £370,000 pay-off, but took up a job four months later at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust on £180,000 a year, despite Ministers having pledged to take back exit payments if the recipient returned to the public sector.”
“Why have they not been? We were told that there needed to be a consultation. After a lot of pressure, the consultation was issued in April 2019, and the responses had to be in very quickly by July 2019. Have the Government yet issued their response to those responses? No, they have not, because it is all so complex.”
“I am sure that the issue does happen in Scotland, and I hope the measures will apply across the whole country, although the latest consultation document that the Government issued indicated that there might be different treatment in different parts of the United Kingdom. The matter has reached the stage of being a public scandal, because money is tight and the Bill is a means of recovering £200 million a year for the taxpayer, both locally and nationally. It is unfortunate that, as a result of answering questions from me, successive Ministers have had words put into their mouths or put on the record that have now proven to be completely untrue, I am afraid. What more can one say? The current Chief Secretary has assured me that he will not fall in the same trap as his predecessors. The regulations could be issued pronto.”
“The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about that. That is why organisations such as the TaxPayers Alliance are trying to work with the general public to raise the profile of these subjects. What is happening is a concerted fraud upon the taxpayer by these officials, who are cosying up to each other and ensuring that they are the only people who do not suffer as a result of their own incompetence.”
“I do not know whether the Chief Secretary thinks that to be a sensible safeguard, but I hope it will find favour. It is ridiculous that we should have to legislate to force the Government to introduce regulations. Many new colleagues are here today. I should tell them that on Fridays the Government often promise the earth and never deliver. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) introduced a Bill to deal with rogue parking operators last year. It got on to the statute book and everyone thought that the Parking (Code of Practice) Act 2019 meant that we would get rid of rogue parking operators. It may be months or years before anything effective is done in regulations.”
“Absolutely, I agree with that. Of course, the Government said that pending the implementation of the regulations, they would ask the public sector to comply with the spirit of them and the primary legislation that had been passed, but I am afraid that is almost impossible for local councillors and, indeed, the Government to do in practice, because we need to have the law in place. That is why I hope we will hear from the Chief Secretary that we will get the law on the statute book later this year so that public sector exit payments are limited to £95,000. Clause 2 of my Bill suggests that we should give notice to all people who might be thinking of getting ahead of the game that they would be subject to the provisions of the Bill in respect of any public sector exit payments agreed after 1 April 2020.”
“I am not sure that that is an adequate excuse. It could be a justification for everything, but in the Treasury it is an issue of priorities. There is no reason why, if hon. Members are given a promise that something is going to be done on a particular date, that promise should not be honoured.”
“I am not sure that my hon. Friend would have put it quite that way. The House needs to have a mood of intolerance of serial incompetence, if not a conspiracy of silence and inaction among people in the civil service.”
“No. I am going to bring my remarks to a close in the hope that we will be able to hear something from my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury before we reach 2.30 pm.”
“Sir Christopher Chope accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 September, and to be printed (Bill 99).”
“In the last month alone, I have received complaints from constituents about the police’s failure to pursue a blatant case of threatened unlawful eviction, their refusal to act against the dealers of illegal drugs and their failure to enforce the Highways Act 1980 against a pavement obstruction. In the latter example, that was despite the offence having taken place just around the corner from the police station in Christchurch. Respect for our legal system depends upon public trust that effective enforcement action will be taken consistently. The Bill would help to restore public respect for the law and for the rule of law. Question put and agreed to . Ordered , That Sir Christopher Chope, Sir Edward Leigh, Sir Desmond Swayne, Mr Philip Hollobone, Nigel Mills, Mr Peter Bone, Bob Blackman and Paul Howell present the Bill.”
“Although there are more than 2 million landlords in England, only 18 individuals and five companies have been put on the register of rogue landlords for offences committed since 6 April 2018. This ineffectual regulation is driving good private landlords out of the market without deterring or penalising the rogues. Many colleagues will be aware of constituents’ anger due to double standards relating to illegal activities by Gypsies and Travellers compared with the actions of law-abiding residents, as well as due to local authorities’ failure to enforce trading standards laws against the rogue operators of park home sites.”
“Other activities that are the subject of regulations that are inconsistently enforced include the licensing of houses in multiple occupation. The Government have set down minimum standards enforceable under the licensing system, yet it is estimated that more than half the properties that should be licensed are unlicensed. While the owners of these 76,000 properties operate with impunity, some local authorities are seeking to penalise those who are registered by imposing size standards far higher than the Government minimum. Local authorities are ignoring all properties that should be incorporated into the licensing system while trying to penalise those that have already applied for licensing. A related scandal is that of rogue landlords.”
“Best estimates are that there are more than 1 million illegal immigrants in the United Kingdom, many of whom are engaged in illegal working and other clandestine criminal activities. They use our public services while undermining fair competition in the workplace. Section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 sets out a series of criminal offences, including knowingly entering the United Kingdom without leave and remaining beyond the time limited by leave. Despite the vast number of continuing offences against section 24, few prosecutions, if any, are commenced. This scandal is completely at odds with the priorities of the general public and our constituents. The number of deportations is also pitifully few. The scope of this Bill, however, goes far beyond fraud and illegal immigration.”
“The purported justification for recording non-crime hate incidents is that they can be the precursor to criminal activity, but an equally strong—or stronger—argument applies to cases of civil or non-criminal fraud. Why do Home Office rules only allow the recording of fraud offences that meet the definition of crime, and why does a similar rule not apply in the case of hate crime? The Bill would reconfirm that the main responsibility of law enforcement authorities under the rule of law should be to investigate and bring sanctions against those in breach of the existing law. Deployment of resources in respect of non-criminal incidents, whether involving hate or fraud, should be treated as non-core activities. Another area of criminal impunity relates to illegal immigrants.”
“In the year ending March 2019, 741,123 crimes of fraud were reported, giving rise to £2.2 billion in losses to victims, but only 42,127 crimes were disseminated for investigation and enforcement by local authorities. Judicial action is being taken in only about 1% of cases. This data is from Action Fraud; if ever there was a misnomer, it is the name “Action Fraud”. I have a constituent who was defrauded of £20,000 last year, from a Santander account, and we are still waiting for Action Fraud to take any action. Despite the Crown Prosecution Service reporting that fraud is the most commonly experienced crime in England and Wales, with an estimated 3.4 million incidents in the year ending March 2017, fewer than 1% of police officers are actually investigating it.”
“While the Home Office collects and publishes information on hate crime offences, information is not collected on non-crime hate incidents or the investigative resource allocated to them. This makes it impossible for Members to hold the police to account for their misuse of resources. It is outrageous that the police are giving priority to matters that are not criminal while criminal activity, which is rife in our country, goes uninvestigated and unpunished. A prime example of this is criminal fraud. Fewer than 1% of police officers directly investigate fraud, while scarce police resources are being expended in recording non-crimes.”
“The Daily Telegraph has established that some 120,000 non-crime incidents have been logged in this way in the past five years, yet neither this Parliament nor the Government have given any authority to the police to deploy scarce and valuable resources on giving priority to non-crime incidents over criminal activity. In answer to a parliamentary question, the Policing Minister told me: “The College of Policing is independent from Government and its role is clear: setting high professional standards…acting as the national voice of policing; and ensuring police training and ethics is of the highest possible quality.” But giving perverse priority to non-crime incidents is not among its roles.”
“The Bill reasserts the importance in our legal system of equality of protection under the law and of equal access to the enforcement authorities charged with investigating breaches of the law and enforcing sanctions against wrongdoers. I can best illustrate the problem by example. Earlier this year, Mr Justice Julian Knowles, in the case of Henry Miller and the Humberside Police, ruled that despite a “hate incident” not being a crime, it was reasonable that such an incident could be logged pursuant to operational guidance adopted by the College of Policing in 2014.”
“Recent events in Cambridge, where the police did nothing to prevent or to take action against blatant examples of criminal damage, serve as a salutary reminder why the Bill is needed. Cambridge is but one of an increasing number of instances in which the Government, their agencies, the police and local authorities have failed or refused to take action to enforce the law. Now that we have left the European Union and are soon to be freed from the yoke of the European Court of Justice, it is a good time to take stock. Continental justice, while paying lip-service to the rule of law, has often incorporated a significant discretionary element, which renders it vulnerable to political pressure for interference and ultimately to corruption by making some more equal than others under the law.”
“I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require public authorities to exercise their statutory powers to investigate and take enforcement action for breaches of the law; to make provision for sanctions for failing to take such action; and for connected purposes. Adherence to the rule of law is one of the fundamental elements of the British constitution. The World Justice Project produces an annual report on the performance of countries across the world in complying with the rule of law. In the most recent report, the United Kingdom scores 80% and is 12th in the international league table. The top country scored 90%. In its working definition of the rule of law, the WJP requires that regulations are fairly and effectively implemented and enforced. This is an aspect on which the United Kingdom can do a lot better.”
“Before calling the next speaker, I should say that the winding-up speeches will start at 5.24 pm. Members will be able to do their own maths and work out how long each of them has to speak. We will start with Alex Davies-Jones.”
“I thank the Government for their wisdom in bringing forward a consultation to remove an anachronistic privilege. Does not the hysterical reaction of defenders of the BBC speak for itself?”
“Order. Before I call Sarah Champion, let me point out that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) referred at the outset of his speech to his entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, but that in itself is not sufficient in a debate. People who are not privy to that register entry need to know the relevance of it, so I will point out that the hon. Gentleman’s register entry includes a reference to the fact that he is a paid adviser to the board of the Outcomes First Group. That is the relevance of it. I remind hon. Members, particularly at the beginning of a new Parliament, that the whole purpose is to promote transparency.”
“Order. The winding-up speeches will begin at 10.40 am. Five people wish to speak, so I encourage a self-denying ordinance of a maximum of five minutes each. I call Chris Green.”
“As a result, a few years later, those of us who had been removed from the Parliamentary Assembly were reinstated. I thank you for that and for your fantastic service to this place and to democracy over so many years.”
“We asked questions such as, “55% of what?” On that occasion, Mr Speaker, you showed your perspicacity regarding which issues were going to be—and indeed still are—important. You were fantastic, Mr Speaker, when we had the presidency of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. You went out of your way to impress our colleagues across the other 46 countries that belong to the Parliamentary Assembly, and then you stood up for those of us in this House who found ourselves being arbitrarily removed from membership of the Parliamentary Assembly because we had had the temerity to vote against the Government’s attempts to try to rig the referendum by suspending the rules of purdah. Your intervention caused the Government to be put into the naughty corner.”
“I will give just one example of that. Back in 2010, after the coalition Government were elected, there was an announcement that the Government were going to bring in a measure which had not been in the manifestos of either of the two coalition parties: to change the prerogative powers of the Prime Minister to call a general election. You, with your finger on the pulse, chose me to secure the first Adjournment debate of that Parliament on the subject of the Dissolution of Parliament. The debate, which I think went on for about an hour and a half, was an opportunity for new Members and old to hold the Government to account for their extraordinary announcement, which at that stage was for a threshold of 55% in order to trigger an election.”
“Indeed, one of your qualifications then was that you regarded, as did I, Enoch Powell as a schoolboy hero. I think that in more recent weeks, you have been following the advice that Enoch gave. I had the privilege of serving with him on the— [Interruption.] Yes, back in 1984 this was. Enoch Powell was on the Procedure Committee, and he gave advice to us that, in the absence of a written constitution, the procedures of the House are our constitution. That is something that you have taken very much to heart over recent weeks and months, Mr Speaker. I hope that nothing that has happened in that period will cause pressure to build for a written constitution, because that would deprive us of those flexibilities. You have obviously been a really good servant for Back Benchers. You have also always had your finger on the pulse.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd). In so doing, may I thank her for her exemplary public service over so many years? The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) referred to career advice. I can remember, Mr Speaker, that you once asked me, at one of these meetings of potential Conservative candidates, whether I could give you some advice as to how you might become a proper parliamentary candidate selected in a constituency. The advice I gave you, which you followed, was that you should get married. That just reminds us, does it not, of how times have changed? You and I have been friends for many years. I had the privilege of nominating you for the Conservative party candidates list at a time when our views were very similar.”
“Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) in asking whether it would be reasonable, if the right hon. Gentleman is returned following the next general election, for the Standards Committee to revisit this issue, having regard to what is on the website now. I commend the work of the Standards Committee and particularly that of its Chair, the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), but it seems to me that what is on the website is designed to bring the work of the Standards Committee into disrepute.”
“An enormous amount of work has gone into this, and we reached a conclusion: “We are satisfied from the evidence we have considered that Mr Vaz did on 27 August 2016 offer to procure and pay for illegal drugs for use by a third party.” Paragraph 54 states: “On the basis of the evidence supplied by the audio-recording and the transcript, we reach the following conclusions germane to the Commissioner’s findings…that Mr Vaz’s explanation of the incident on 27 August 2016 is not believable…that on this occasion Mr Vaz expressed a willingness to procure a Class A drug, cocaine, for the use of another person…that on this occasion Mr Vaz engaged in paid-for sex. We consider that the evidence supporting these conclusions is compelling.” On that basis, I follow my hon.”
“Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) reading out what is on the website of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), it filled me with horror, because it is totally contradictory to the findings of the Committee. What does not come across in a report such as this is the detail that has been gone into by the members of the Committee—including lay-members, who do it for love, really—the commissioner and her predecessor.”
“I had not intended to participate in the debate, but I am a member of the current Committee. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) will recognise, serving on the Standards Committee is one of the less pleasant responsibilities that falls to Members, but that is the position I have been in for quite a long time. I can recall a time when we passed sentence, in a sense, on my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), saying that she should make an apology to the House. I was in the House when she made her apology, and I recall the sense of outrage that her apology was not as full as some people might have wished. As a result, she suffered additional penalties in her constituency—it was a long time ago and I am sure that has all been forgiven. In that context, when I listened to my hon.”
“On behalf of all hon. Members, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on what is perhaps the last debate he will initiate in this House. He has been a faithful servant in this place since 1992. I have had the privilege of serving on Select Committees with him. I know he has also served on the Panel of Chairs. Along with other hon. Members, I wish you a very long, successful and happy retirement.”
“While I am on my feet, it looks as though, from what the Leader of the House said in his point of order, a motion has been put down for Monday under section 13(1)(b) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, but it will not fall under section 1(1)(a) of the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019. The motions we debated today covered two different Acts and two different provisions, but I understand that the motion down for debate on Monday relates only to the 2018 Act, so it seems—I hope that you will be able to consider this over the weekend—that it cannot be regarded as the same issue that we dealt with today. I hope that you will be able to take such matters into account.”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Do you think that this issue should be referred to the Procedure Committee? It always used to be a convention that we had decent notice of business. That convention has been in a sense undermined by, for example, the recent practice of debates following applications under Standing Order No. 24 taking place immediately after the application has been granted, rather than on the following day, which gives people notice. We have some dangerous precedents for business being changed at short notice to the detriment of Members of this House and to members of the public who might want to attend our proceedings. If the matter was referred to the Procedure Committee, it may be able to recommend some tightening of Standing Orders so that this sort of situation did not arise again.”
“Yes. If you can put it that way, I am, and I can say that I first had the privilege of joining the Procedure Committee back in 1984, when it was graced with the presence of the right hon. Enoch Powell and many other distinguished Members of this place.”
“Order. In the absence of the Member we hoped would be chairing the sitting, it falls to me as the only member of the Speaker’s Panel present to take the Chair and to invite Sir Peter Bottomley to move the motion on my behalf.”
“The caravans are not bungalows and do not even enjoy the benefit of a site licence, and gullible members of the public are being seduced by sharp marketing and misleading advertising into buying homes that are no more than chattels on unlicensed and therefore illegal sites.”
“An application has been submitted to Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council for a caravan site licence, but the land identified in the application is not co-extensive with the land identified on the approved plan. When I first complained to the council I was told that the applicant had not even paid the required fee for the application. The council is advising the applicants that unless their current application is amended it will be refused. New Forest Glades is, therefore, being heavily marketed as a site for expensive new luxury bungalows, some of which are, I believe, already occupied.”
“To describe a caravan as a bungalow must surely be a breach of advertising standards. The promotional material omits any reference to the fact that the homes are caravans or park homes—and, therefore, chattels rather than interests in land. It highlights one of the consequences flowing from such status—the exemption from stamp duty—but fails to mention liability for 10% to be paid on resale. Furthermore, it does not refer to the fact that, as caravan sites, they have to be licensed under the 1960 Act, but are not. New Forest Glades, formerly known as Port View Caravan Park, benefits in planning terms from a certificate of lawfulness permitting the siting of caravans for residential use on the land identified in that certificate.”
“The property section of the current edition of the Christchurch Times , a popular weekly newspaper, contains two full pages of advertising that promotes park homes provided by RoyaleLife. These include New Forest Glades in Matchams Lane and New Forest Glen, currently known as Tall Trees, in Matchams Lane. Despite their names, both sites are well outside the New Forest. What is more serious, however, is the description of the homes, which are offered for sale as “single storey” and coming from “the UK’s largest bungalow provider”. They are not bungalows. The “Collins English Dictionary” defines a bungalow as “a one storey house, sometimes with an attic”. It also quotes the origin as coming from the 17th century Hindi word “bangla”, meaning a house of the Bengal type.”
“Paragraph 3.4 of the supplementary planning document, “The Dorset Heathlands Planning Framework 2015-2020”, states that “caravan and touring holiday accommodation” is “likely to have the same effect” on the heathland as residential development. That is not the opinion of Natural England, but that organisation seems unable to enforce its own rules against caravan sites, even though it imposes the same rules with total inflexibility and rigour on any new proposed residential development, however small. Although the issues relating to Silver Mists are matters for the new unitary Dorset Council, the largest number of unlicensed sites in my constituency are in the new Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole unitary authority area.”
“These issues should have been controlled by the local authority through the site licence process, but there has been a reckless failure to take action. One of the park homes that is currently being advertised on that site is 50 feet by 20 feet, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and priced at £379,950, but it does not say anywhere that it is on an unlicensed site. Silver Mists is within 400 metres of protected heathland. Under the severe restrictions in the habitats directive it would never have been given planning permission as an ordinary residential development, but there will now be 45 new permanent dwellings on the site, making a mockery of the protections that Natural England seeks to enforce on environmental grounds.”
“This might include the need for planning permission for certain works, as set out in the licence”. He went on to say, in paragraph 58: “Trees on the site are the subject to a Tree Preservation Order…and that would apply irrespective of the outcome of this appeal.” In paragraph 45, he stated: “The site is secluded with a perimeter fence and gates. When entering the site it is surrounded by mature planting. There is nothing in the LDC application that would lead to a finding that this would change.” If you visited that site today, Mr Hollobone, you would see that it is more like a moonscape—devoid of vegetation, with monumental earthworks having taken place and most of the trees and vegetation having been removed, despite the site being in a protected heathland habitat.”
“At the time of the appeal, the site was subject to a licence granted to the Bournemouth and District Outdoor Club for use by touring caravans, but following the appeal decision the site is being developed and used for the siting of permanent residential caravans, despite no variation of the original site licence having been granted and without any transfer of that licence to the new owners. Paragraph 49 of the appeal decision in respect of Matchams Drive, which is now being renamed Silver Mists, referred to the fact that the site licence conditions would protect infrastructure with respect to issues such as hard standing and drainage. The inspector said that the council retained control “by virtue of the manner in which the licence is framed.”